Thứ Bảy, 16 tháng 3, 2013


Three to be tried for blackmailing cops

The Thua Thien-Hue Province People’s Court is preparing to try three men of a gang for extorting US$5,800 from a traffic police team by threatening them with a video tape showing wrongdoings they committed while on duty in 2010.

Nguyen Thanh Hai, head of the central provincial People’s Procuracy, said on Friday that the agency has completed the indictment of the case and referred it to the court for hearing.

According to the indictment, Dinh Ngoc Trung, 29, of Ho Chi Minh City, Truong Ngoc Vu, 26, of Da Nang City, and Huynh Ngoc Tho, 28, also of Da Nang have been prosecuted for “appropriating assets”.

Police are hunting for another defendant, Ngo Quoc Bao, who was the mastermind of the blackmail but fled away when his gang members were arrested.

The police team involved in the case comprised five officers led by Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Van Vinh as the team head, who has been removed from his post and transferred after the case was uncovered. 

As shown in the indictment, on April 19, 2010 Trung lurked behind a door of an unoccupied house in Loc Thuy Commune, Phu Loc District and videotaped the police officers who were handling violators of traffic rules at a site about 50 meters away. 

One day later, after copying the video tape from Trung’s camera to a USB, Bao and Trung hired a motorbike taxi driver to hand an envelope which contained the tape and contact phone numbers to another police team led by Lieutenant Colonel Pham Van Phong.

After watching the tape, Phong handed it to Vinh, who later received a call from the gang threatening that if the police team failed to pay them VND200 million (US$9,600), the  tape would be publicized.
After further negotiations, the blackmailers agreed to reduce the amount to VND120 million, which was later transferred by Vinh to some bank accounts  under instructions of the gang on April 21. Each of the five officers had contributed VND24 million to the amount.
Two days later, Vinh received another call from the gang asking him to pay the same amount [VND120,000] once again, but Vinh and his team members rejected the claim.
On May 4, the gang hired a motorbike taxi driver to hand the USB to the head of the provincial Department of Railway and Road Traffic Police, who later questioned the team and then reported the case to the director of the provincial Police Department.
After investigation, police arrested Trung, Vu and Tho while Bao escaped.
No evidence for bribery 

After watching the video tape and make some verifications, the provincial Investigation Police Agency concluded that it could not find any signs proving that the police team had taken bribes from traffic offenders.

However, as shown in the tape, the team members committed many wrongdoings while on duty, including stopping many cars at a time, not saluting the vehicles’ drivers when meeting them, not checking vehicles after stopping them, and embracing and shaking hands with traffic violators.
For such offenses, the provincial Police Department removed Vinh from the post of deputy head of the Patrol Squad No. 2 and transferred him to another division.
Four other police officers, Lieutenant Colonel Tran Hai Van, Major Tran Van Tan, Senior Lieutenant Tran Chau Nguyen and Sub-lieutenant Bui Manh Hung, were also disciplined and transferred.
Yesterday afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Vinh told Tuoi Tre that the blackmailers had continuously threatened him that they would release the video tape to the media and to the provincial police department if he refused to transfer the money to them.

“At that time, for fear that we would be disciplined for our wrongdoings if the tape were publicized, we all had to agree to pay $5,800 to them,” Vinh said.

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